


the grapes were sour anyway

by Coel



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 13:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10021847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coel/pseuds/Coel
Summary: Someday, somehow, surely—inevitably—the world they have constructed for themselves is going to come crashing down. The fall won’t be pretty.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for general teen angst, including: alcoholism, (unrequited) love, and a brief depiction of masturbation.

Hak doesn’t dream.  


He goes to bed at night, and in the morning, he wakes.  


To him, the world of dreaming is an abstract concept he doesn’t quite understand. Those who have the fortune of being able to dream can construct and experience whole worlds for themselves. Their wildest waking dreams become reality under the night sky’s watchful eye.  


Lucky them.  


All Hak has is the waking world, and it’s not much. He has Yona, sure, but he doesn’t really have her. There’s always distance between them – both real and imagined – and there will always be. If Hak could dream, that distance would be crossed in a heartbeat.  


But he imagines that every dream in which he had Yona beside him, only to wake to nothing but still air in his arms, would only tear him apart more and more.  


That insufferable princess already permeated every waking thought of his.  


It’s a good thing Hak doesn’t have dreams. Yona would definitely plague those too.

* * *

He continues to stroke, quickening his pace, his warm breath coming out in short, needy pants, the crisp air turning them into little wisps of clouds. A line of sweat dots his brow, the taut, sheened, muscles of his forearm flexing as he works himself. He bites back an incriminating moan—one that, if heard, could fell all that he holds dear, could topple over the incredibly delicate balance that is his world, that is him and—  


_Yona._  


With a final sigh, he falls back onto the mat, guilt already overcoming him as he copes with what he has just done. There is a large rock poking into his back. It is painful, but he does not move it. He finds solace in thinking that perhaps it is a small form of divine retribution.  


It’s a good thing that mirrors are not very common outside the castle. He couldn’t bear to look at himself anyway.

* * *

Hak could not look at Yona without being reminded of what he had done, what he continued to do, when the dragons and Yoon and Yona were gone, doing laundry or exploring or whatever it was they did in the brief moments of peace they had. For some time, he couldn’t even look at her without going red in the face and feeling the urge to apologize, but then she, inevitably, would want to know why and of course, knowing would make matters worse so he kept his mouth shut.  


After a while, the all-consuming guilt that ate him dulled into an ever-present, but decidedly much easier to live with, sense of shame, and he was able to fall back into normalcy with Yona.  


But things were different now.  


He wouldn’t allow himself to touch her. Not again. Even innocent gestures. One more warm embrace, one more chaste kiss, one more brush of the fingers and he would be driven absolutely mad. Not that he wasn’t already off his rocker, considering the fact that he had fallen utterly in love with the one woman in the world he couldn’t—shouldn’t—have, but that’s beside the point.  


Sometimes, though, when he’s watching her care for others with a tender and kind expression on her face, when he sees her stand up for those who cannot defend themselves, when he hears her voice filled with animosity and excitement opposed to the bratty, childish voice she once had, or when she stands so tall and regal that he feels small in comparison, he is in awe, and he wonders if it’s really such a crazy thing to be in love with her.  


She has no throne and no crown but she’s more royalty than anyone.  


Her authority comes not from an arbitrary title, but from the sincerity, the care, and the power within her words.  


Yona is worth something. She has a purpose in this world, a meaningful one, and she’s going to shake the Earth’s very foundations.  


Hak does not think so highly of himself.  


Something as small and insignificant and mundane as he is in the grand scheme of things has no business containing an emotion so oceanic. So he makes do the only way he can – by gritting his teeth and pretending it isn’t there.

* * *

Hak has a new hobby these days – drinking.  


He discovers the wonders of such one night at a bar. The crew had originally gone in to help a man being mugged, and they stayed for the music and (in Jae-ha’s case) the promise of sex. Zeno had pulled a reluctant Yona and Yoon with him to the dance floor while Ki-ja nervously looked on, looking desperately like he wanted to join in the fun. Jae-ha was off hitting on some poor unsuspecting civilian, which left Hak alone at the bar.  


The bartender, sensing Hak was in a bad mood, set a drink in front of him. “’S on the house.”  


Hak grunted in thanks.  


“Rough night, huh?”  


“Rough life.”  


Then he took a drink, and nothing was the same.  


For weeks, he kept the drinking to a minimum. He still had the job of protecting Yona, no matter what she said, and for that job he would stay alert. But on the off-nights, when all is right with the world – as right as it could be – and the other dragons are watching her, he indulges.  


Some nights he drinks with the others. Most nights he drinks alone.  


Tonight he is drinking with Yona.  


She’s a bubbly drunk. The kind that’s ten times more affectionate than what is appropriate. The kind of drunk that gives hugs to people she’s just met.  


Hak is the somber, contemplative kind of drunk. Normally he drinks, and he thinks. If he drinks too much, if he dulls his mind too much, then he can forgo thinking and just stare at the stars in the bliss that is ignorance.  


He’s not at that point yet, but being with Yona makes him feel a bit blissful nonetheless.  


She is giggling at a dumb, unfunny joke he made, her eyes sparkling bright, her face flushed (her cheeks rivaled the red of her hair then).  


The sake they were passing between them warmed them more than the fire did.  


It was a good night, he thinks, one that neither of them will be able to remember clearly, but when he’s older and looks back on his time with Yona, he will remember how he felt.  


Well, was a good night. Because, in Hak’s certain fashion, he ruined things. He is a ruiner. Hak is good at protecting Yona and not much else.  


Someday, somehow, surely—inevitably—the world they have constructed for themselves is going to come crashing down. The fall won’t be pretty.  


He says so to her.  


“It won’t always be like this, Princess.”  


She quits her giggling to stare at Hak’s somber face in surprise.  


“Clarify, Hak.”  


Out of the corner of his eye he sees her looking up at him expectantly.  


He clears his throat. “One day, you and I won’t be together anymore. The others, too. This,” he says, gesturing around them to indicate their lifestyle, “Will all end someday.”  


This seems to sober her up some.  


“Hak,” she says, in that commanding, scolding tone of hers. “Don’t be so dreadful, especially about the future. I believe that we’ll all be together forever.”  


“You believe that because you’re naïve,” he says. A pang of guilt goes as quickly as it comes.  


Her eyes widen in shock and then set in anger and he swears she is staring daggers through him. His mind is so doused in alcohol he can’t find it in himself to care.  


“I don’t think I like you when you’re drunk, Hak.”  


“Join the club.”  


The anger emanating off her body is white-hot and palpable and he feels a bit like he’s thrown a match on a house doused in kerosene.  


Suddenly she reaches out and tries to snatch the bottle of sake away. Hak grips it tightly with both hands but, drunk as he is, he feels it beginning to slip out of his hands, so he lets go. Yona falls back from the force of it, the alcohol spilling all over her.  


Now he feels bad.  


“Yona, I’m so s—“  


She holds up her hand to signal him to stop talking. He thinks she’s going to yell at him some more but she says, finally, her voice small, “Why are you so sure I won’t be in your life forever?”  


He is taken aback by her question.  


Then, with liquid courage coursing through his veins (though it was much more stupidity than bravery) he edges closer and closer to her until their faces are little more than centimeters apart. She looks as on edge as he feels.  


“Do you want to be?”  


His voice is low and husky, his eyes searching hers for some sign that this isn’t a lost cause, that he isn’t hopeless.  


He finds none.  


He sits back, an admission of defeat. He’d known she was still in love with Soo Won. He’d known for years. So why does he hurt to badly now?  


“Hak, I…”  


He holds a finger up to hush her. “Some things don’t need to be said.”  


“I’m not naïve, you know. I hope that tomorrow will be a better day, and if it isn’t, then oh well, you move on. As long as you’re alive, Hak, you’ve got to just keep moving on.”  


He nods in recognition but he doesn’t hear her. His mind is as far away and unreachable as his eyes are.  


She takes a swig of what’s left of the sake to wash the ashen taste of guilt down her throat, then passes it to him wordlessly. He swallows down what’s left of the alcohol and his dignity in one gulp.

* * *

Either Yona had been so drunk that she’d completely forgotten what had transpired between her and Hak (incredibly doubtful) or, more likely, she had just forgiven him. She was never the type to hold grudges anyhow.  


Regardless, there is a palpable difference now.  


He witnesses it in the distance she keeps. When they walk, she’s always a tad bit further away from him than she used to be, and those few centimeters feel like hundreds of miles.  


She is careful now. Before, it was Hak who consciously withheld from touching her. Now he sees she’s playing the game, too. It should be easier on him, he knows (and he knows that’s precisely why she does it) but it isn’t.  


He witnesses it in the way she looks at him. Sometimes, she looks through Hak with faraway eyes and sometimes she looks him in the eye and he can discern a nearly imperceptible glint of sadness, of apology, and worst of all, of pity.  


He wonders what it’s like to be loved so completely by someone, where love withstands not only the tests of distance and time, but of betrayal, too. Soo Won is lucky in that.  


But he wasn’t loved that way. Not by Yona.  


So he coped with this reality the only way he knows how.  


Yona could have her optimism and her perseverance, but Hak would make it through life with his right hand and a bottle of sake. 

**Author's Note:**

> idk why I wrote this


End file.
